


With You I'm Feeling Something

by Lesbianna



Category: Simonverse | Creekwood Series - Becky Albertalli
Genre: Blue Reveal, Identity Reveal, Jacques meet Blue, Jacques reveal, M/M, POV Bram Greenfeld, What if they did meet in a dark room, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 08:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18587821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesbianna/pseuds/Lesbianna
Summary: "He knows Simon technically could be Jacques - but there are a lot of boys who speak and write in sentence fragments, and there are a lot of boys who have had three girlfriends in the past, and most teenage boys like Oreo cookies. That doesn’t mean Simon Spier is secretly gay.Maybe that is why he wants to do this. To make Jacques real and force Simon to become less of a possibility.He’s in the photography department, and after flicking off the light switch to the room he’s in, he stops in front of the door to the dark room. He could turn back, but. He won’t."orJacques asked Blue to meet him in a dark room. What if Blue said yes?





	With You I'm Feeling Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShinMeiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinMeiko/gifts).
  * Inspired by [What if...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18563971) by [ShinMeiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinMeiko/pseuds/ShinMeiko). 



> This is entirely inspired by ShinMeiko's 6th chapter in their "What if..." fic. I wanted to just write Bram being nervous before meeting Simon, but then suddenly it turned into a whole Bram POV for the fic. I was just so inspired by your story, and I decided to post it for you.
> 
> Title is from Writing's On The Wall. It's originally by Sam Smith but I was listening to Sofia Karlberg's version while writing.

He drums his fingers nervously against his jean-clad leg and looks around the tiny toilet stall. He’s standing in the middle of the stall - not touching any of the walls, nor sitting on the toilet, and very carefully making sure he doesn’t stand in anything resembling a pee puddle. Bram’s not entirely sure if it was a good idea to wait in here, but. Well. He’s not taking any chances. He half wants to take out his phone and start drafting an email to Jacques, despite the shitty service at school, and tell him where he is. He can already imagine the email in his head. Something along the lines of _don’t worry Jacques, clearly it’s not just gay boys afraid of getting their first kiss from a girl at a middle school dance who hide in the school toilets - sometimes it’s gay boys afraid of meeting the guy they’ve been exchanging steamy anonymous emails with for weeks._

Okay, maybe he won’t include the _steamy_ part. Or, to be perfectly clear - he won’t include _any_ part of it, because he won’t start drafting an email to Jacques now. It is possible he’ll send one later, assuming this doesn’t go sideways.

He drums his fingers against his leg once again, and wonders if _any_ of this was a good idea. Not just the hiding in the toilet stall part - all of it.

He isn’t even sure why he agreed to Jacque’s suggestion to meet in a dark room. It might - _might_ \- have something to do with what Jacques said when he, or rather, Blue, asked how they’d keep from recognizing each other’s voices. _We wouldn’t have to talk_.

Bram likes to pretend he isn’t a hormone driven mess, but this is Jacques asking if he wants to _kiss him_ in a _dark room_. He knows he’d be a fool to pass that up.

So he’d sent back an affirmative email, and in response, first gotten an email entirely consisting of exclamation marks, then a second one where Jacques outlined his Plan.

It had been well thought-out and even written with bullet points like Jacques had prepared it as a small presentation, almost as if he knew that would impress Bram.

  * _Jacques will enter the photography department’s dark room ten minutes after the start of lunch break._
  * _Jacques will switch the ‘room in use’ light outside so no one else opens the door._
  * _Except for Blue!!_
  * _Jacques will sit against the wall, next to the door, on the opposite side of the opening and wait._
  * _Blue will arrive five minutes after Jacques._
  * _Blue will ensure that the light is off before closing the door so he will not be able to see Jacques._
  * _Both of us are allowed to leave at any time for any reason, but the other has to wait two minutes before following._
  * _Anything that produces light is not allowed._
  * _Speaking isn’t allowed either._



It had been charming and a foolproof plan. Bram had skipped out on the last ten minutes of math class in nervous anticipation. He hadn’t wanted to accidentally spot Jacques walking into the room, so he’d hidden in the disgusting toilet stall.

He pulls out his phone from his back pocket. It’s time.

He mechanically washes his hands before he leaves, because straight boys leave their germs everywhere, and Bram wants no part of it, and starts walking towards the photography room, wondering what exactly he wants to happen in there. If he wants to somehow figure out who Jacques is, or if he really just wants it to be what Jacques said - a meeting in a dark room, where they don’t know who the other really is.

He thinks it’d be a bit weird to know who Jacques is - it’d be a bit like being attracted to three different people at once. Jacques, who he’s emailed with for what feels like a lifetime, but also Jacques who actually goes to this school, maybe even has classes with him, and Simon Spier. Bram thinks he’d burst feeling so much.

He isn’t entirely sure what kind of person it makes him, that he’s attracted to two different people at once.

But, well. He isn’t physically attracted to Jacques, not yet, anyway. He’s attracted to Jacque’s personality and he’s attracted to his words, and he thinks he’d be attracted to Jacques pretty much however he looks, but he doesn’t actually know that yet.

(Technically he won’t know even after meeting Jacques.)

And Simon… Well. He doesn’t even know Simon well enough to be attracted to his personality. Even though he sits with him at the lunch table every day, he still doesn’t really _know_ Simon, not really. He knows Simon technically _could_ be Jacques - but there are a lot of boys who speak and write in sentence fragments, and there are a lot of boys who have had three girlfriends in the past, and most teenage boys like Oreo cookies. That doesn’t mean Simon Spier is secretly gay.

Maybe that is why he wants to do this. To make Jacques real and force Simon to become less of a possibility.

He’s in the photography department, and after flicking off the light switch to the room he’s in, he stops in front of the door to the dark room. He could turn back, but. He won’t.

For a second, just before he opens the door, Bram is filled with fear that Jacques won’t be there at all, despite the ‘in use’ sign. It’s almost enough to make him feel nauseated, but somehow, he’s still opening the door, slipping inside and closing it behind him.

He’s not entirely sure what he expected to happen - that Jacques would be on him the second he walked into the room like in a cheesy rom-com? That hasn’t ever been Jacque’s style, Bram thinks, and not his either.

He knows where Jacques is, as per their agreement, so he slides down the wall and sits. He feels the warm heat of a shoulder close to his.

He’s sitting next to Jacques. For some reason the thought just won’t compute in his head - he feels short of breath at the thought, and he repeats it to himself. _I’m sitting next to Jacques. Jacques is sitting next to me._

Jacques is warm and real and sitting right next to him and - and Jacques’s hand is right next to his. His pinky is brushing Bram’s palm. He thinks that means Jacques wants to hold his hand. It makes him feel warm all over to think about it. He really wants to hold Jacques’ hand. He turns over his hand and entwines his hand with the invisible boy next to him.

Maybe it’s because of the darkness, or because of the emails, or just because it’s the first time he’s ever held a boy’s hand, but it feels enormous. It feels too big for this small room. The whole world has narrowed to this, and the only body part he really feels is his hand.

Then Jacques' hand moves up his arm, and Bram isn’t sure what it means - does he want to pull Bram in for a kiss? He doesn’t think this is conducive to kissing though, this awkward position on the floor and against the wall, so he pulls Jacques up so he’s standing and waits for _whatever_ Jacques is going to do.

Jacques is touching his arms, and it really shouldn’t be making him feel so shaky to have someone touching his arms, but it’s _Jacques._ He can hear Jacques make a quiet sound in the back of his throat, as though he likes Bram’s arms, and that’s. That’s good.

Bram reaches out and finds Jacque’s shoulders - the ones he’d felt the heat from minutes ago. Jacques is clearly a little shorter than him, and while he really doesn’t have a preference for height in boys - part of the appeal of Mr. Sexual Awakening had been how tall and broad-shouldered he was - an image from one of his soppy fantasies about Spier, who is just a little shorter than him as well comes into his head. He likes to imagine what it would be like to be out of the closet and dating Simon Spier; how Simon would cuddle into his arm at the lunch table and still reprimand him about stealing his fries and he’d stroke Simon’s arm in apology; how perfectly they would fit together.

It’s not fair to Jacques though, to be imagining Simon, and he knows that. Jacques is sliding his hands up Bram’s arms, over his shoulders and feeling his chest, which is. Fuck.

He’s starting to sound like Jacques with the sentence fragments, and he barely even cares. As much as he had expected this bit, it’s also unexpected. Boys have always been fantasy-land for him, not something quite real, not something he would ever quite be allowed to touch. And here is Jacques, _touching him_.

He slowly slides his hands behind Jacques' shoulders, up this back to the nape of his neck and runs a hand through messy hair - no products, just messy hair - and the other to touch his face.

The boy is wearing glasses. And Bram can’t help it, it’s all adding up to be Simon Spier in his head. Smaller than him, glasses, bedhead, sentence fragments, a love for Oreos.

The thought is almost enough to distract him when Jacque’s hand is going up to his neck, no doubt to return the favor and touch his face, but he’s not a soccer player for nothing - his instincts have him reaching out to grab Jacques’ - Simon’s? - hand to prevent him from reaching his hair.

It feels as if he touches his hair, he’ll know. There aren’t a lot of black students at their school, and even less black male students, and the group of black male athletes is even more vanishingly small. But then again. It’s possible Jacques - Simon? - won’t notice - he’s oblivious. And even if he does, maybe it won’t be so bad.

Jacques is pulling his hand away, as though saying _got it, no touching the hair_ , but Bram has already made his decision and he can’t back out now. He pulls the hand a little closer and places it on his neck. He feels Jacques’ - Simon’s? - breath on his face, as the boy slides his hand over the skin on his throat, then behind his neck and up into Bram’s curls, where they still for a moment of realization. He can’t feel Simon’s breath anymore, and it makes him feel like panicking when the hand in his hair starts moving, and another hand goes up to touch his cheek, caressing his face.

And what is he supposed to do faced with - sort of, anyway - this boy, who might very likely be Simon Spier, touching him and knowing that he can only be one out of three possible students? This morning, Blue could have been anyone, but now Blue is someone Simon Spier - _possibly_ \- is touching and caressing the hair of.

The desire to kiss Simon - Jacques - has been there for ages, but it’s like a wave now, and he’s helpless. He leans in, one arm sliding around the other boy’s waist and a hand on a cheek, and they meet each other halfway, in a dark room in a school, secret and hidden.

The kiss isn’t long, and it’s quite chaste. And Simon - it _has to be_ \- tastes just like Bram has dreamed he would. And all of a sudden - or not so sudden - he _wants_. He _needs_. He has to know. It’s rushed and insane, but if he can kiss this boy every day, he wants to come out - at least to everyone that matters. He wants to tell Garrett and his mom and his dad and he wants to kiss Simon, and he wants to sit at the lunch table cuddled up with Simon and have Leah Burke make fun of them. And maybe later, the thought of being _that_ out will scare him, but right now, it seems like the most natural thing in the universe, like there can be no downside, no awful consequences.

And he whispers,

“Simon?”

Because he has to know. He has to be sure.

And the world is quiet. There is nothing, no sound, no breathing. Simon - _please please please -_ isn’t even breathing in his arms. He’s like a statue.

And then,

“Bram?”

And it’s Simon’s voice, and he sounds so _hopeful._ So _happy._

And then Simon turns on the lights - it’s a soft, muted red light, and Bram is reminded of where they are. The Dark Room.

Simon looks pretty in this light - he looks pretty in all light, but especially right now. His cheeks are a little flushed and his eyes big and moon-gray as he looks at Bram. Takes him in. And Bram can’t help but smile at him.

He really wants to kiss him again. He thinks he would be allowed to. He thinks Simon would be _happy_ about it. He doesn’t have to retreat into fantasy-land to do it.

But then the bell rings, loud and clear, and Bram is rudely reminded that the photography department isn’t just a place outside of space and time - but a place very much _in_ space and time.

Space: The school.

Time: The end of lunch break.

“I guess we have to go,” Bram says regretfully.

Simon sighs like he doesn’t want to go either. “I guess so. Do you want to go first?”

“No,” Bram tells him. “I want us to go together.”

“People might see…”

“Let them.”

He’s not entirely sure if he’s brave enough - not for kissing Simon again, nor for going out of that door, but then his body has already somehow moved and is kissing Simon again, reassuringly.

Simon looks dazed and happy - which is pretty much the words to describe Bram too.

 _Let’s just go out,_ he thinks and grabs Simon’s hand.

He opens the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, ShinMeiko... I just realized the end scene's resemblance to the coming out scene in Fucking Åmål, except in that, it's two lesbians leaving a toilet, and in this one, it's two gay men leaving a dark room. Poetic cinema!


End file.
